


Taking Inventory

by GCLane



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Canon Jewish Character, How many different ways can I tag this "Jewish", Jewish Holidays, Judaism, M/M, Rosh HaShana | Jewish New Year
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:21:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21820861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GCLane/pseuds/GCLane
Summary: “Shana tovah,” David remarks, turning off his phone’s screen and looking at Patrick.“I’m sorry?”“It basically means ‘happy new year,’ except Jews don’t believe in happiness, so it’s really more about goodness? A good year.”“Say it again.”
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 112
Kudos: 624





	Taking Inventory

**Author's Note:**

> 9/2020 note: I have gotten >1 comment expressing confusion/snark that David and Patrick were able to attend Rosh Hashanah services at the synagogue depicted in this story without tickets. I would prefer not to receive anymore comments like this, SO - 
> 
> Yes, it is the practice at the majority of synagogues in North America to ticket High Holiday services (non-Jewish people: there are good reasons. Trust.). However! It is a practice that some synagogues have begun to abandon, precisely so people like David and Patrick can make a choice to observe holidays without a financial or logistical barrier standing in their way. If Schitt's Creek can exist free of homophobia, then an area synagogue can have un-ticketed High Holiday services.
> 
> The synagogue and rabbi in this story strongly resemble my HH synagogue and service leader. It is both non-ticketed and beloved, things which are not entirely unconnected for my particular Jewish journey. Thanks for respecting that going forward.

In their second year in business and thanks, in part, to the pack of bored, thieving teens, they’d been doing a regular count of small items, a quarterly evening of takeout, printed spreadsheets, and highlighters. Green meant that the count of in-stock items matched the number on the spreadsheet, yellow meant it was a little off, and pink meant check your mother’s dressing table, David.

It was mid-September. They ate barely acceptable Chinese takeout while counting nail brushes and containers of naturally-derived, organic lactic acid overnight cream. Patrick had an idea. Or perhaps it was David. It can be hard to reconstruct the path of a conversation when you’re giving half of your attention to an eggroll, half of it to noticing the difference between two shades of pink-tinted lip balm, and half of it to the way you’ve been speaking to the same person for fifteen months, wearing paths in your approach to interrupting one another, teasing, clarifying, listening.

Basically, someone said something about pumpkin carving, possibly as a joke, possibly riffing on a threat leveled at the teens - _“What the hell are they doing with so much bath oil?” “Do you want an actual answer to that, Patrick?”_ This led to wondering aloud if there was anyone in town who knew how to do those fancy pumpkins, the ones where you don’t just cut holes, but, like, peel strategic layers off of them, which led to Googling pumpkin farms in a 100-mile radius, which led to finding a pumpkin and apple farm that also pressed cider and made butters (pumpkin, apple, pumpkin-apple), which led to David trying to simultaneously eat lo mein and articulate an entire, you know, _concept_ for the store for the month of October while his yellow highlighter rolled under the sweater table.

“Spooky,” Patrick summarized.

“But, like, charming. In a creepy way.”

“Creepily charming. Charmingly creepy?”

“ _Buffy the Vampire Slayer._ Show, not movie” David clarified.

“Obviously.” Patrick teased.

David, chewing and nodding, made a sweeping circle with his chopstick-free hand. He swallowed. “I know. But I wanted to be clear.”

“Everything you’re saying is 100% clear.”

David did not notice how firmly Patrick’s tongue was in his cheek, “Can you call the farm tomorrow? We’re going to need to rent a truck. Maybe? Do you have to pad pumpkins to move them?” David hopped off the table where he was dining, bringing the takeout container with him. “I wonder if the basement is cold enough to keep them fresh? They won’t fit in the produce fridge,” he disappeared into the back hall. Patrick sighed, smiled, and began re-counting the shampoo bottles, but in French this time, to add some novelty to the work.

*

This is how David and Patrick end up 65 miles from home on a Sunday into Monday, scheduled to stand in a field and have opinions about the acceptability of pumpkins. And apples. And pumpkin-apple butter.

After a day of standing in said field, they have a room in a nearby B&B waiting for them. Patrick offers to do the driving. It’s dusk as they arrive in a town closest to the farm. David has been quiet during the drive, but, on the main street, something grabs his attention.

“Holy shit,” he sits up straighter, jabbing his index finger against the passenger window, “Jews!” David swivels his head to share his excitement, but his expression drops at Patrick’s raised eyebrows. David rolls his eyes, “ _I’m_ allowed to say it like that. Unlike your trashy high school friends, I’m not gonna throw stuff at them.”

“My friends wouldn’t have -” Patrick begins to defend them, but the look David gives him strongly suggests that David believes he has delivered an accurate condemnation.

There is a decent-size crowd of people filing into the open doors of a well-lit building.

David consults his phone. “It’s Rosh Hashanah.” He pauses. “I lost track.”

Their B&B is down the street from the gathering. Patrick parks the car and admits, ‘I have heard of it, but I don’t think I know what Rosh Hashanah is.”

“Yeah, gentiles don’t, even though they act like they do sometimes,” David says absently, still studying something on his phone. There’s not enough available space in David’s attention for Patrick to indicate mild offense. “It’s the new year. The birthday of the world.”

“Huh.”

“Shana tovah,” David remarks, turning off his phone’s screen and looking at Patrick.

“I’m sorry?”

“It basically means ‘happy new year,’ except Jews don’t believe in happiness, so it’s really more about goodness? A good year.”

“Say it again.”

“Shana tovah.”

“Shana tovah,” Patrick repeats.

“Eh,” David smiles, tipping his hand in a “so-so” gesture while leaning over the center console to kiss Patrick’s cheek.

*  
The awkward, nervous-laughing, middle-aged B&B owner handing David the keys to the “Lavender Room” while David draws a big, warm circle on Patrick’s back with his open palm is too insistent about confirming the okayness of a single queen.

While walking down the hall, David murmurs “I would have made a joke about at least two queens being in the room, but that would have made everything take longer.”

The room is definitely, definitely the Lavender Room, both in appearance and odor. “It’s like being entombed in a macaron,” David observes, turning slowly on his heel.

“I kind of like it.”

“I didn’t say I don’t like it.” David smiles at Patrick, stalking toward him. “I am a particular fan of that headboard. Looks… sturdy.”

“There are only six rooms in this place and that woman,” David is crowding into his space, kissing him, “has pretty delicate sensibilities,” another kiss, “I think.”

“I will ravage you so, so quietly, baby.”

*

A year in, if you asked them to complete a confidental survey, they would both indicate that the sex continues to be medium terrifying. If there was a Likert scale, one to ten, the terror level of the sex would be a solid six all around.

Naturally, this means it’s incredible.

David says things like, “Tell me what you want to do to me, beautiful,” while he’s sliding his hands under Patrick’s shirt, and Patrick blushes and stammers. Patrick says things like, “I’ve never felt like this about anyone else,” while he’s kissing David, and David has to pass a minute covering his own face, breathing into his palms. David asks Patrick, “How does it feel when I touch you like this?” and Patrick can only think _good good good good,_ his brain skipping like a record. Patrick asks David, “When did you know you were in love with me?” and David can’t think anything at all, the question rendering the very concept of time meaningless.

What’s funny - what’s hilarious, really - is that they each know that they’re scaring the other one half to death. They both think the exact same thing about it - _it’s good for him. He’s too anxious about all that. I think I’m helping him, even if it freaks him out._

*

Patrick wakes up at eight-thirty and is surprised find David out of bed, showered, and buttoning the ‘these clients might be conservative so I’ll turn down the volume’ plain white shirt that he brings on every trip.

“Good morning?”

“Good morning.” David takes a deep breath and produces a black tie from his bag. Patrick was unaware that there was an emergency tie to go with the emergency shirt. “I’m going to temple.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.” David deflates slightly, almost imperceptibly. “I feel like I have to.”

“Okay.” Patrick props himself up on his elbows. “Should I come with you?”

David shakes his head. “You don’t have to.”

“But- but can I?”

David gives him a dubious look while tying his tie. “You don’t actually want to do that.”

“Sure I do,” Patrick sits, mentally reviewing the clothes in his own bag.

“We could be there for hours. I have no idea what this place is like.”

“It’s fine. I want to go with you.”

Patrick is already in the bathroom, turning on the shower, when David consents with an, “Um, okay,” that Patick can’t hear over the rush of the faucet.

*

The synagogue entrance is crowded and loud, people hugging and kissing, when they walk in. David tells Patrick to wait, hurries across the lobby, sticks his head through the sanctuary door, looks around, and, apparently satisfied, returns to Patrick. “We can stay.”

“I assumed that was the plan.”

“Not until I checked on the gender politics in there, it wasn’t.” David runs his hand up and down Patrick’s arm. “Unfortunately, most of the men have their heads covered, which means basket kippot for us. Ew.” David rummages through a wicker basket of yarmulkes, inspects the inside of several, and hands one to Patrick. “I have like ten of these. This is what I get for losing track of time.”

“You own ten yarmulkes.”

“Well, yeah. Weddings, bat mitzvahs, couple of gifts from relatives… they’re like tribbles.”

“You own ten yarmulkes and you just made a Star Trek joke.”

“Nichelle Nichols is an international treasure. Here - let me clip that to your slippery little head.” David’s hands are steady on the back of Patrick’s head. He stares at a pride flag with a star of David in the middle of it while he waits to be told that he can move again.

*

It’s exactly like church.

It’s nothing like church at all.

The rabbi gets things started by barreling over all of the talking with the help of the pianist. There is sitting and standing and more sitting and then more standing and the rabbi, Patrick is glad, makes a sweeping gesture with her arm every time they’re supposed to stand.

And then sit.

And then stand.

Individually, people talk almost constantly during the service, a low hum underneath the collective effort of participating in the call-and-response that the rabbi leads. Patrick desperately wants to lean over to David and express his surprise that the rabbi is a woman - he had no idea there were women rabbis - but he can’t figure out the rhythm of the acceptability of talking. The service is fast and long and efficient in a way that feels like they’re running through a list of important, time-sensitive tasks, like taking inventory or baking a cake.

Over half of the service is in English, but David can read Hebrew. _David can read Hebrew._ He knows the songs without looking at the little booklets they were handed and he sits and stands (and sits and stands) without paying much attention to the rabbi’s arm.

There are children running around the room, climbing the thing that’s probably not an altar if you’re Jewish, sitting next to the rabbi, drawing her attention, chattering, reading comic books, eating, and sometimes squabbling with one another. No one seems bothered. When babies cry or chatter loudly, the rabbi acts as if they were affirming or denying something she said. “My point _exactly_ ,” she enthuses at a toddler trotting back and forth between her and the front row.

The rabbi hefts scrolls out of the… thing where the scrolls go and chants some more Hebrew, big and loud, and the room, standing, chants back, even bigger and louder than they have all morning. Patrick has goosebumps; he has tears in his eyes that he doesn’t understand. David’s hand is warm and squeezing the nape of his neck.

The rabbi hands the children the deep blue velvet cover she pulls off the scrolls and enlists two of them to help her unroll it. While she does all of this, she directs her seemingly offhand comments at them. She doesn’t like the story of Abraham and Isaac, she says, but they’re going to read it anyway, because it’s what you read on Rosh Hashanah. We’re supposed to, she says, and it’s good to dislike it and read it at the same time. It’s good to learn about things we don’t like so we are informed enough to disagree with them.

What can we learn from a story about a parent who’s so caught up in his own life that he harms his child? The children sitting on the not-an-altar giggle, look away, and pet the blue velvet as their answer. “True, true,” she turns again to face the room.

*

They’re taking a coffee break down the street before something called tashlich when Patrick blurts, “You’re actually Jewish.”

David smiles and gives his head a little shake. “Yes I am.”

“I just thought,” Patrick stammers, “I was raised Anglican and I went to church on Christmas and Easter. I was confirmed, but… I don’t know. I guess I don’t really think of myself as Christian? I assumed you were the same about being Jewish. Maybe I assume everyone is the same.”

David sniffs his coffee before he drinks it. “When my mom and dad got married, my dad’s parents were worried that their grandchildren wouldn’t be Jewish. So my mom and dad promised they’d raise us Jewish and make us all legal and real. So we are.” David tips his head and considers before adding, “It doesn’t really map onto Christianity. It doesn’t work like that. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s, like, not a thing I have to assert.”

“And it’s important to you.”

David half-closes one eye and looks up. “I guess so? Like, if I had to make a list? Being pan outranks it, and so does being a business owner, but it’s definitely a... thing about me. A part of me.” His eyes flick back to Patrick’s.

“A thing a boyfriend should know.”

“One of those, yes.”

“Why haven’t we talked about it?”

“Because people,” David says the word with verbal finger quotes, “tend to react poorly to religiosity. And it’s kind of strange.” The there-and-then-gone eye contact David gives Patrick is a question, David’s perennial concern that he is too much for Patrick or, possibly, anyone.

Patrick looks out at the town’s main street, nodding his head slowly, considering. “It’s not strange. It’s hot,” he decides as he returns his gaze to David.

David flinches, half-smiles. “I’m sorry?”

“It’s different. You know a whole other alphabet! So nerdy.” Patrick nods, feeling pleased that he has made David blush. “I like it a lot.”

“You’re weird,” David’s tone is offended, but his smile is huge.

“I am.”

*

Patrick skims the Wikipedia entry on Rosh Hashanah while David uses the restroom at the coffee shop. They go to a river near the synagogue.

A woman hands Patrick a small paper bag, smiling warmly. “It’s pebbles,” she explains. “Bread isn’t good for the waterfowl.” He had read about the bread controversy while waiting for David. He feels a tiny, pleasing click, a foothold.

There’s more Hebrew that David knows and Patrick still thinks it’s hot. They’re casting their sins of the previous year away. They’re given time to reflect on what those might be. Patrick widens his eyes, stares down at the water. He thinks about Rachel and his parents and opens the bag. Can he cast what he’s done to his parents away if he hasn’t fixed it yet? If he can still press on it, like a bruise?

“This is really intense,” he murmurs to David.

“Yeah, we’re like that.”

*

The bar and grill next door to the B&B has a long tap menu and ten different burgers.

“You eat cheeseburgers,” Patrick notes.

“Because they’re fucking delicious,” David says past more of a mouthful than is strictly polite.

“I thought there was a rule about that.”

“It’s tacky to police someone else’s level of observance. Give me some of your fries to repent.”

*

They’re back at the B&B and in their pajamas by sundown. David is folding his shirt carefully, tucking it into his overnight bag, when Patrick asks, “If you had kids, would you raise them to be Jewish? Would you do what your parents did with you?”

“I don’t want children.”

“I know that. These are imaginary, non-awful children. They are perfect. You love them desperately.”

“Then yes. Definitely.”

Patrick realizes that his next question is not theoretical, knows it in the way his heart hammers against his temples when he clears his throat to ask, but he still frames it as if it has nothing to do with them. “So, like, what if you got married? Would you want a rabbi?”

David nods, “Yes.” The hotel room is too quiet for too long. Patrick bites back all of the caveats and clarifications he wants to offer. David takes a breath. “I’ll be in the - um, skincare.” Patrick lets him go.

He waits, lying on the lavender bed in the Lavender Room in his pajamas, scrolling through the news. David doesn’t come back for 20 minutes, which is five minutes longer than it should take. He leans against the wall next to the bathroom door. “Hi,” he’s a little breathless, a little flustered.

Patrick smiles at him from the bed. “Hello.” He pretends he is feeling neither breathless nor flustered.

David indicates the bathroom with his index finger, “I was just having a tiny nervous breakdown. I realized,” the way he sings it out makes Patrick’s brows raise, “that I have never had a conversation about marriage with someone who I could - in theory, mind you, in theory - actually marry.”

“And how are you doing now?” Patrick has had countless conversations about marriage with a person he could have - in theory and practice - actually married. The realization that their typical roles - Patrick new and stumbling, David out ahead - have been reversed leaves Patrick feeling calm, possibly giddy.

“Screaming on the inside,” David gestures at his solar plexus, “but I think it will stay in there.”

“Good, good.” David puts his toiletry kit back in his bag and joins Patrick in bed. “I mean, it’s not like I was proposing.”

“If someone proposed to me in this Provencal nightmare, I would murder them.”

Patrick feigns a sweeping inspection of the room. “I have way more game than this.” Teasing David is fun, but the news of Rachel’s existence is recent. He’s watching closely as he pushes.

“I’m sorry?”

“Only someone with a total lack of creativity would think this was a good place to propose.”

“Are you teasing me? Are you teasing me when I’m feeling vulnerable?”

“You’re feeling vulnerable?”

“Yes!”

“Then I should stop.” David begins to nod his thanks as Patrick adds, “And I will, but I just want to stress that I have proposed to someone before. It was definitely just a dry-run, as it turns out,” he laughs faux-breezily, “but I do have practice.”

“Oh my God,” David flops onto his side and pulls the quilt over his entire body, saving them both.

Patrick sprawls over the quilted bundle, wrapping his arms around what feel like a shoulder and a knee. “I’m sorry,” he says, but he’s grinning.

“No you’re not,” is the strident, muffled rejection.

“Thank you for letting me come along today.”

David pushes the quilt off of his head. “Thank you for acting like it was normal and something you wanted to do.”

Patrick sighs and presses David’s shoulder to the mattress, rearranging them until Patrick is sitting astride his hips, his hands resting on David’s shoulders. “Please stop waiting for me to leave you,” he insists.

David looks to the side. “It’s the statistically likely outcome.”

Patrick laughs and kisses David’s cheek, settling on his elbows. “I didn’t realize that I’m gay until I was in my thirties. You have had a front row seat for almost every single moment of that realization. You were partially responsible for it.” Patrick takes a deep breath. “I had a panic attack - an actual panic attack - the first time we took off our clothes.”

“I know.”

“That is one of the most humiliating things that has ever happened to me.”

“I know.”

“And you saw it. And helped me. And didn’t even blink.”

“I did.”

“And you’re still here.”

David shook his head. “Of course I am.”

Patrick kisses him, slow and sweet. “I have no plan to leave you,” he murmurs against David’s mouth. “I know what it feels like to have a plan. I don’t.”

“Okay.”

For a moment, the length of a kiss, the words “marry me” well up in Patrick’s throat. It’s a thought entertained for the barest second - to hell with rings and careful plans. But, when he breaks the kiss, instead, he says, “Shana tovah.”

“So, _so_ close,” David kisses him again. And again.

**Author's Note:**

> In brief, the way I'm portraying David's level of Jewish literacy here is in line with the information we've been given in canon. If you have questions, I'm open to hearing them or suggesting some resources, but I'm not here for debate or pushback. I say this based on experiences I've had in other fandoms, which have made me a bit skittish. 
> 
> Thank you for understanding and for reading! I appreciate all of you and all of the kudos and feedback I've received from you generous, generous people.


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